How can embracing limitations increase you and your teams' creativity? Simple, research-based findings to guide you on why imposing constraints help creativity flow.

1. Using constraints to
inspire your creativity
How embracing limitations can
help anyone be more creative
What does a 1950s recliner and an rural Indian
eye clinic have in common? The Eames Lounge Chair
embodies the “test of time”
expression: the much
coveted recliner still sells for
over $5000 *used* despite
being debuted in the 1950s.
It was designed by the
revolutionary design duo,
Charles and Ray Eames.
The Aravind Eye Clinic
is a mobile eye clinic
serving India’s poorest.
Forgoing western
hospital luxuries, the
clinics can therefore
provide same-day
cataract surgery and
produce lenses and
sutures in-house.
Without constraints
design cannot
happen.
“
- Charles Eames
The most award-winning
ads can be classified into
six categories5
★ One experiment5
found that
nearly all award-winning ads
could be classified into 6
basic categories (i.e.
templates) - whereas only
2.5% of unsuccessful ads
could be classified
★ Therefore highly creative
ads are more predictable
than uncreative ones
80% of stories in the Chicken Soup for the
Soul series can be classified by just three
categories
★ The screenwriter Robert McKee, famous for his writing
seminars, teaches students 25 different types of stories
★ When researchers1
applied these story types to Chicken Soup
for the Soul books, they found that 80% of the stories could be
categorized as just three of the 25 types of stories
○ Furthermore, these three can also classify 60% of stories
in People Magazine’s about non-celebrities
Creativity Plot Challenge PlotConnection Plot
1. 2.
That means not only can
creativity flourish when limits
are in place, but that creativity
can be taught
When design templates were taught to regular
people like you and I, they produced better ads
than those taught divergent thinking
Not only do constraints make us more creative,
they can offset groupthink tendencies when we
work together2
.
The bad news: group work often invites biases into decision
making that decrease our ability to come to better conclusions
than we could have working alone.
Simply put, brainstorming isn’t
enough to generate great ideas
Improve your brainstorming by setting
predefined selection criteria prior to project
launch
★ Unfettered brainstorming processes (AKA “divergent
thinking”) including focus groups, free association or
limitation-free thinking are less effective than working with
design templates
★ Design-powerhouse, IDEO, uses the “innovation funnel” to
bring into constraints into the ideation and selection phases
of new project development
Inspired? Try starting with some everyday
constraints found in our environment today
★ Cultural constraints like “lefty-loosey,
righty-tighty” rule on opening faucets
or loosening screws
★ Or the wooden block games for
children that rely on physical
constraints
★ Poems use semantic constraints like
rhyme and meaning
★ The colors and patterns of traffic lights
are an example of cultural constraints
References:
1. Heath, C. & Heath, D. (2006). Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.
2. Sunstein, C. & Hastie, R. (2014). Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter.
3. Brown. T. (2009). Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and
Inspires Innovation
4. Norman, D. (1988). The Design of Everyday Things.
5. Goldenberg, J., Mazursky, D., & Solomun, S. (1999). The Fundamental Templates of Quality Ads.
Designed & edited by Natasha Hawryluk, M.Sc.
The innovation funnel helps reduce cognitive
biases related to myopia: Framing effects,
availability bias, confirmation bias or the planning
fallacy
Think apple falling on
Newton's head.
Recall the biblical “Good
Samaritan” story.
★ When people with no expertise in advertising were trained in
the templates for two hours, it resulted in more creative,
on-brand and humorous ads compared to similar training in
free-association methods or no training at all5
.
3. Recall the story of
“David & Goliath”.
Constraints are deterministic aspects of a
object or situation that limit the set actions
that can be performed.
The Aravind Eye Clinic is an example of design under extreme
constraints3
and as for the lounge chair, Charles Eames was a
proponent for using constraints in design.
★ Solution 1: Constrain decision making only to executive level
○ Discourage discussion in final stages and discourage
executives involvement in ideation phase
★ Solution 2: Try using the “Delphi Method” for group decision
making
○ Voting by elimination cycles continue until all members
converge on a single idea - selection in constraint by
majority agreement